Thursday Island is where people live and work in the Torres Strait; Horn Island is where the runway is. Rebel Marine's ferry stitches the two together twelve times each way on a weekday, and several of those sailings exist purely to catch a Qantas departure.
Timetable published as valid from 16 February 2026; read from Rebel Marine's own page on 22 September 2026 Rebel Marine – Thursday Island Timetable · 2026-09-22
Thursday Island lies off the tip of Cape York in the Torres Strait, in the far north of Queensland, and no road reaches it. Horn Island is its neighbour to the east, close enough to see across the channel, and it is where the region's airport was built. That single split — the town on one island, the runway on the other — is what this ferry exists to solve.
Rebel Marine, trading as Torres Strait Tours, runs the crossing from an office at 2–8 Douglas Street on Thursday Island. Torres Shire Council lists them as the operator of the Thursday Island – Horn Island return service and gives the same phone number the company publishes itself. It is a commercial service, not a Transport and Main Roads contract, so the fares and the grid are the operator's own and change when the operator decides they change.
The practical consequence for a visitor is simple: you cannot fly into the Torres Strait and stay on Horn Island unless you meant to. Nearly everyone who lands there is heading for the boat, which is why several sailings carry a QF flag and why the fare you are quoted on arrival may not be the fare for the ferry at all.
Rebel Marine publishes four price lists on one page, and the first one you see is not the ferry. That table is headed TI Ferry and Airport Bus and quotes $34.00 for an adult each way — it is the boat plus the ride across Horn Island to the terminal. The ferry on its own is the second table, TI Wharf to HI Wharf, and it costs $14.00. The arithmetic confirms it: $14.00 on the water plus $20.00 on the bus is the $34.00 headline.
| Adult | $ 14 |
| Child 6–13 | $ 7 |
| Under 6 | Free |
| Aged or disability pensioner | $ 9 |
| Torres Strait resident, adult | $ 9 |
| Torres Strait resident, child | $ 5 |
| Family, 2 adults and 2 children | $ 33 |
| Adult, 10 trips | $ 85 |
| Child, 10 trips | $ 40 |
| Wharf or village to the airport, adult | $ 20 |
| Wharf or village to the airport, child or pensioner | $ 10 |
| Wharf or village to the airport, family | $ 45 |
| Horn Island wharf to the village, adult | $ 6 |
| Horn Island wharf to the village, child | $ 3 |
Fares dated 1 February 2026 by the operator; read 22 September 2026 Rebel Marine – Fares · 2026-09-22
The two landings sit barely 2.8 kilometres apart across the channel, near enough that you can see one from the other on a clear day. Rebel Marine does not publish a crossing time and neither does Torres Shire Council, so we have not put a figure on this page; what the map does show is how tight the gap is, and why the ferry rather than a plane is the local commute. The state's other island service on this site, the Daydream Island transfer, covers a good deal more water, and does it for a resort rather than a runway.
Rebel Marine's office is on Douglas Street in the island's small commercial strip, a short walk from the waterfront, and the company runs a free courtesy bus anywhere on Thursday Island for passengers crossing to Horn Island. You ring the office to book it; there is no set pick-up point. The fares board calls this end simply TI Wharf, and Torres Shire Council places the business at Hocking Point.
The timetable abbreviates this end HIW — Horn Island West — and the landing sits on the island's western shore facing back towards Thursday Island. The wharf is not the airport: the terminal is across the island, which is why Rebel sells a bus transfer from the wharf on top of the boat ticket, and a cheaper hop from the wharf into the village.
Sailings marked QF are timed against Qantas. Rebel says it will run a boat for every Qantas, RPT and charter movement, so if your flight sits in a gap in the grid, phone 07 4069 1586 instead of booking the sailing before it.
On Thursday Island the courtesy bus is free for anyone crossing to Horn Island, booked through the office. On Horn Island nothing is free: the wharf to the airport is $20.00 for an adult, and the wharf to the village $6.00.
The operator is explicit about it: Horn Island bus pick-ups must be requested the day before. Leaving it until the morning of your flight is how people end up walking.
The $9.00 adult resident fare requires ID showing a Torres Strait address, or a letter of eligibility from your island council. Without it you pay the $14.00 visitor rate.
Rebel answers the phone while the ferry is running but only has staff on the bookings desk during business hours, and asks that reservations be made then. Bookings are strongly recommended rather than optional.
The service does more than carry visitors. The same operator runs the school ferry to Hammond Island on weekdays, sells water taxis on demand, and issues ten-trip loyalty cards that are restricted to residents who live on one island in the strait and work on another — a detail that tells you more about how this channel is used than any tourist description could. It also explains the two-tier fare table: $14.00 for a visitor, $9.00 for someone whose council can vouch for their address. The Tiwi Islands ferry across the top of the country works to the same logic from the other end: the boat is public, but the community it lands in is not simply a destination.
What the operator does not publish is how long the boat takes. Neither the timetable page nor Torres Shire Council gives a crossing time, and the fifteen-minute gap between the two rows of the grid is the interval between departures from each side, not a journey length — the column is headed from, meaning origin. We have left the figure off this page rather than guess at it. The distance between the two published landings is about 2.8 kilometres, so it is not a long ride.
$14.00 for an adult each way, wharf to wharf. That figure comes from Rebel Marine's second fare table, headed TI Wharf to HI Wharf. A child aged 6 to 13 pays $7.00, a pensioner $9.00, and children under 6 travel free on all services.
Because the first table on the operator's fares page is the TI Ferry and Airport Bus package. It bundles the boat with the bus ride across Horn Island to the air terminal. Add the ferry's $14.00 to the bus's $20.00 and you get exactly the $34.00 headline. If you are not flying, you do not need it.
Rebel Marine says it runs ferries to meet all Qantas, RPT and charter flights and asks you to call 07 4069 1586 if no published sailing suits. Several grid entries already carry a QF mark for exactly this reason, including the 09:00 and 13:45 from Thursday Island every day of the week.
06:15 from Thursday Island, with the first boat back from Horn Island West at 06:25. That pairing runs Monday to Saturday. On Sunday nothing moves before 08:00.
The last Sunday pairing is 17:00 from Thursday Island and 17:15 back from Horn Island, and the return leg is marked against a flight. The 18:00 and 18:10 sailings that exist Monday to Friday do not run at the weekend at all.
By Rebel's bus, and you need to book it the day before. It is $20.00 for an adult one way, $10.00 for a child or pensioner, and $45.00 for a family. A shorter hop from the wharf into the Horn Island village is $6.00 for an adult.
No. The courtesy bus on Thursday Island is free for anyone making a Horn Island transfer and will collect you or drop you anywhere on the island; you just have to ring the office to arrange it.
We have not found an official figure and we are not going to invent one. Neither Rebel Marine nor Torres Shire Council publishes a journey time, and the gaps in the timetable are departure intervals rather than durations. The two wharves are about 2.8 kilometres apart, and the operator's number is 07 4069 1586 if you need the exact minutes.